The present project serves two main purposes: (1) to improve knowledge on mental and communicative development in preverbal human infants, focusing attention upon didactic tendencies recently detected in intuitive forms of parental behaviors by Papousek and Papousek; and (2) to characterize similarities and difference related to intuitive parenting in two cultures--Caucasian American and Mandarin Chinese--that differ dramatically in the tonal quality of the adult language forms. Interactions between mothers and their infants at the ages of 2 and 4 months have been videotaped for microanalysis of vocal sound patterns, facial expressions, gestures, and other behaviors involved in mother-infant communication. Spectrographic analysis of vocal sounds has been methodologically enriched (in cooperation with Dr. David Symmes, BBCS, LCE) by introduction of innovative programs facilitating computer-aided analysis of pitch patterns. Data on the total of 15 American and 18 Chinese mother-infant dyads have been collected and from this data set 350 one-minute-samples have been selected macroanalytically and auditively categorized in relation to the main types of interactional contexts. Maternal utterances from these samples have been transcribed, translated by a Chinese linguist, and prepared for microanalytical evaluations in further collaboration with Papousek and Papousek at the Laboratory of Developmental Psychobiology in Munich, Germany. Preliminary findings have revealed striking similarities in patterns of infant-directed utterances by American and Chinese mothers, despite the major differences in multiple dimensions of the two adult language forms. The project has been temporarily inactivated pending the return of the Max Planck collaborators to the LCE.